Cascade Mentoring Project

Design and development of a social robot for fostering cooperation with COVID-19 public health measures.

This project will study the efficacy of GerminatorBot-19 for fostering cooperation with COVID-19 health measures in KSU students and secondary (middle and high school) students. The COVID-19 health measures will include mask-wearing, proper hygiene (e.g., using hand sanitizer and disinfecting high-touch surfaces like mobile phones and computer keyboards), and daily health checks (e.g., temperatures and symptom checklists)

The project pursues three goals:
1. Design: Design an innovative educational social robot that promotes compliance with COVID-19 public health measures.
2. Scientific inquiry: Study the efficacy of GerminatorBot-19 in fostering compliance with COVID-19 health measures and the impact of users’ individual characteristics and attitudes toward technology on human-robot interactions

The project will follow a design-based research approach using short, iterative design cycles.

Research Question 1: How effective is GerminatorBot-19 in fostering cooperation with COVID-19 public health measures in secondary and college students?

Research Question 2: What role do individual characteristics and attitudes toward technology play in secondary and college students’ engagement with GerminatorBot-19?

The team ATR EDU (ATR Lab & EduTech @ Kent State) team is currently lead by Saifuddin Mahmud, and is composed of a mix of graduate students and undergraduate students with diverse background (software engineering, mechatronics, fashion design, educational technology, early childhood education). The team is under lead supervision of Dr. Jong-Hoon Kim (director of the ATR Lab), Dr. Elena Novak (Associate Professor in Educational Technology) and Dr. Shannon Smith (Educational Robotics Curriculum Researcher and Teacher at New Philadelphia Highschool). A for a full list of all team members and advisors please see below.